Section 2-3 Planned Cities on the Indus

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Notes:


Bold Words:
Subcontinent: Landmass that includes India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
Monsoons: Seasonal Winds that can cause flooding and drought depending on the winds.
Harappan Civilization: Another name for Indus Valley

Key People:
Shiva: A important Hindu God


Key Events:

The Geography of the Indian Subcontinent
-Rivers, Mountains and Plains-
  • The large mountains protected the Indus Valley from invasian and protect a fertile plain in between the Indus and the Ganges.
  • The two rivers make the Indo- Ganetic plain that has good irrigation and silt.
  • The Deccan Plateau are formed by the Eastern and Western Ghast which prevents moist air to reach the dry land.

-Monsoons-
  • Monsoons can cause flooding when the clouds have heavy rain storms June to October or monsoons can bring dry hair through October to February which makes it hard for crops to grow.

-Enviromental Challenges-
  • Floods were unpredictable with the Indus River
  • Rivers changed Course
  • Monsoons distroyed crops and people starved

Civilization Emerges On The Indus
* Historians Don't know much about the people on the Indus River but believe that it influenced an area bigger than the Egyptians or Mesopotamia did.

-Earliest Arrivles-
  • People who arrived by sea from Africa settled South and Northern Migrants may have come through the Khyber Pass in the Hindu Kush Mountains.

-Planned Cities-
  • They made strong levees, earthen walls, and made human made islands to keep water from over flooding.
  • To plan out cities they used a grid system. The Citadel contained the major buildings in the city, they were built by oven made bricks.
  • They also made good sewer systems which suggests that the Indus people formed a strong Central Government because of the planning and construction of the cities.

-Harappan Planning-
  • Harappan was built on mud bricks to prevent flooding, and a had a thick brick wall surrounding the citadel. The citadelwas a place for a royal family or a temple.
  • Houses varied in size and walls seperated different residential districts from eachother and each house had a wastewater hole.

Harappan Culture
-Language-
  • The Harappan writing consisted of 400 symbols. It was much like hicroglyphs which means the symbols represented a picture of an object and different sounds. Some symbols are single and some go together.

-Culture-
  • Toys and clay items were found which shows that they were prosperous and good efford extra items. There arent many weapons found which shows they didnt fight a lot.
  • Archiologists found a lot of animal printings on items which shows the different kinds of animals back then.

-Role of Religion-
  • The Harappan may have believed in theocracy. Might of had beliefes in Hindu Culture and in the god Shiva.

-Trade-
  • The indus river provided transportation so it was easy for the Harappans too trade with people from the north for silver, gold and cloth with jewelry that they had made from the Persia and Deccan Plateau.
  • They have traded with the Mesopotamians and the Persuian Gulf allowed them to bring copper, lumber, precious stones, and luxury goods to Sumer.

Indus Valley Culture Ends
  • The Indus Valley Culture could have ended because of tectonic plates moving which caused flooding, earthquakes and the Indus River to shift.
  • The natural disasters could have caused the Sarswati river to dry out which destroyed other cultures because there was a lack of trade. The soil also could have exhausted by overuse so the Harappan culture had to move to survive.
  • The Aryans culture moved to the Indus Valley which helped spread Indian Civilzation